Staten Island roads surveyed by former DOT commissioner Sam SchwartzFormer DOT commissioner Sam Schwartz, now a traffic engineer, presents his traffic/toll plan during a recent Advance Editorial Board which calls for lowering tolls and improving a vast majority of New York City's roads. Schwartz also toured Island streets and gave his assessment on conditions and how they can be improved.

By Sam Schwartz

I have shown the MOVE NY presentation, my plan for fixing New York City's transportation system, about 200 times now and each time I include a slide showing the Borough of Staten Island. The slide shows dollar signs for every entry point by car onto the Island and says nearly $600 million is collected in tolls but there's no subway.

I usually say to the audience, "Now let's imagine we are planners on Mars. We've been invited to the hippest city on Earth -- New York City. We wanted to go the hottest part of the hippest city so we look through our telescopes and see long queues of cars lined up to get into Staten Island. Nowhere else do we see this, so we say, 'Take us to Staten Island; that's got to be where the action is!'"

I'm not saying that Staten Island isn't a hip place. What I am saying is that it's unfair that Staten Islanders, as well as truckers and workers heading to the Island, have to pay tolls from which the majority of the money goes to subsidize rail transit to Manhattan when it is the only borough with no rail link to Manhattan. In effect, Staten Islanders are subsidizing drivers using the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges who pay no tolls.

Let's take the Manhattan Bridge which moves 500,000 people per day. 400,000 of the people crossing the bridge do so on one of the four subway lines (B, D, N, and Q) that flank the lower roadway; 100,000 in motor vehicles. About 250,000 people use the Verrazano Bridge but it has no subways. At the bridge with the subways the drivers do not subsidize the trains but on the bridge with no trains the drivers do. See anything wrong with that? Should the 200,000 people using the Verrazano subsidize the 100,000 people in motor vehicles using the subway-rich Manhattan Bridge for free? I don't think so.

I'd like to tell you this is an isolated example but, in fact, our toll structure within the City of New York is so screwed up that many neighborhoods suffer immensely while lots of drivers pay too much at some bridges and others pay nothing. This causes "bridge shopping" where motorists drive out of their way to save toll money.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than at the 105-year-old Ed Koch-Queensboro Bridge. It is the only bridge I know of in the world that is "sandwiched" between two toll crossings so close together.

To get into Manhattan through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel or over the RFK-Triborough Bridge costs a driver $5.33 each way via E-ZPass, with truckers paying $40 or more. But, that driver or trucker using the Queensboro pays nothing. But, not only does that driver take an indirect route adding miles to a trip, he/she also typically leaves a highway to use city streets to get to the bridge (all the toll facilities have long highways leading to them, the "free" bridges are mostly accessed by city streets).

More miles plus switching from highways to streets equals more crashes, injuries, and fatalities. No wonder that both ends of the Queensboro Bridge rank as crash hot spots.

So what's the answer? In short, let's do a "Tabula Rasa" (i.e., start all over again) on all our bridges and tunnels and figure out how to be fair, how to reduce vehicle miles travelled, and how to save lives.

With a team of transportation and policy experts we have come up with the MOVE NY plan. Bridge shopping comes to an end; we return tolls to the four East River bridges (they were all built with tolls when they opened until 1911).

Do the same for people entering from the north across 60th St.

Not a toll booth would be built; money would be collected via E-ZPass (80 percent of drivers have them), license plate photography and via apps.

Lower the tolls at all the outer bridges that don't go into Manhattan's business district by almost 50 percent. This will reduce the pressure to drive through Manhattan to New Jersey.

Charge a little more for taxis in Manhattan (although those cabs will move faster offsetting some of the increase).

At the Verrazano, Staten Islanders would have their already reduced tolls slashed nearly in half. Same for workers and truckers heading to the Island from elsewhere.

It's the right thing to do.

For a full description of the plan please visit: move-ny.org.

So as a driver myself I am asking my neighbors to join with me and shout "we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore." Implement the MOVE NY plan.

Sam Schwartz, popularly known as "Gridlock Sam," is an expert on traffic, highway, bridge, transit and parking systems. A former New York City traffic commissioner, he is president, chief executive and founder of Sam Schwartz Engineering.